St Richard, Haywards Heath Requiem for Pope Benedict XVI 4.1.23

Today’s Gospel recalls how ‘Andrew took his brother Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked hard at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John; you are to be called Cephas’ – meaning Rock’. We read elsewhere in the Gospels how Our Lord renames Simon: Peter - literally ‘rock man’ - founding his Church on the ‘rock’ of Peter’s faith in Christ’s divinity.  To this day the Christian world takes note of the successor of St Peter, first Bishop of Rome, seeing him as a referee helping safe play continue down the centuries. This is why the death of a former Pope is being marked at the altar this evening.

Pope Benedict XVI, whose funeral is tomorrow, was an exceptional Bishop of Rome and one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century.  Some Bishops, priests and Popes are more pastors and some more teachers.  Benedict, like his friend Archbishop Rowan Williams, came to office from being a theology professor. That friendship, one of many he had with Anglicans, came to the fore when he visited the United Kingdom in 2010 to canonise John Henry Newman.

Unlike his successor Pope Francis, more pastor than teacher, Benedict has gained an unfair reputation as over dogmatic churchman. This is despite his being instrumental with other theologians of the revolutionary empowerment of the laity at the 1962-5 Second Vatican Council. Picking up on failure to address clerical abuse under the reign of Pope St John Paul II, Pope Benedict acted only to be blamed himself  for the abuse crisis, one reason he resigned and handed over to Pope Francis. 

I speak as one widely read in his writings. Only last week I was reading his book on the biblical texts related to Christ’s birth. His writings, so rooted in scripture, transcend the Catholic-Evangelical divide in the Church. Benedict’s passion was to help rise above Christian divisions to commend to the next generation the reality of the risen Lord. In this  he used captivating images such as his commending to people, young and old, what he calls ‘Jesus’ Hour’, attendance at Sunday Mass, through which the Lord manifests himself to us transformatively in word and sacrament week by week, day by day, down through the centuries.

As Anglicans who value our Church’s place in the stream of Christian believing through the centuries we should be grateful for steps he took in 2012, seen as provocative by some, to establish an Anglican Ordinariate which has become a sort of bridge between our Communions under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman. Though both the action of and the secession of many from the Anglican Church over female ordination in recent years is controversial Pope Benedict’s action remains an affirmation of the intrinsic catholic credentials of historic Anglicanism which would warm Newman’s heart. 

When we compare how global media treat Pope Benedict’s reputation compared to informed church circles it is evident how very little the reputation has to do with the man. It is our reputation before God, each one of us, that will count when at last we stand before him. A holy and gentle soul Benedict’s last recorded words were ‘Lord, I love you’. He knew God’s love and laboured to bring others into its orbit. As St John puts it so beautifully in the passage we read yesterday at Mass ‘Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are… what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is’. So be it for us - and for Pope Benedict, blessed in name and in life.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Unity 29th May 2022

‘May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ John 17:21 

It seems to me Our Lord’s invitation reaches us as a church at three levels, local, national and universal.

First local. It has always been a privilege for me to serve St John’s, starting 21 years ago as diocesan mission & renewal adviser working with Fr Clay and Fr Kevin and more recently in your pastoral vacancy. With no parish priest our Churchwardens with Deacon Stephen have worked hard through thick and thin to build our collaboration as we seek to promote Christianity in Burgess Hill and we salute that work as the vacancy draws thankfully to a close. 

Fr David comes among us with welcome oversight to develop the life of St John’s with an eye to renewing worship, engaging youth and families and enhancing our buildings for better Christian service and outreach. He will need our support and prayers from day one as he presides over the coalition of catholic, evangelical and liberal Christians here at St John’s, keeping us united and outwardly focussed.

Our Lord’s invitation to be one as he is one within the Godhead reaches us as a church at a second level, nationally. 

Through the Five Guiding Principles the Church of England is fully committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender. It also remains committed to ensuring those who cannot receive the ministry of women priests or bishops are able to flourish, continuing their witness to the Church of England’s claim to hold the faith and practice of the universal church. The majority decision to ordain women in 1992 failed to take the minority with it. There’s a majority but no consensus. This is a slow burner made more complicated by the ordination of women to the episcopate in 2015 which was effected under the understanding spelled out in the Five Guiding Principles. 

St John’s members have given exemplary patience in bearing with the national division over views of the ordained ministry. It isn’t sexist to hold to the Bible and the practice of the worldwide church, Catholic and Orthodox over 20 centuries. Neither is it a betrayal of Christian principle to seek the ordination of women. It’s just that changing holy orders, one of the seven sacraments, is like changing the heating system in a church. There’s an upheaval and a chilling effect – and the national church remains in the middle of it! No easy answers here, just patience. The Holy Spirit is saying one thing to part of the church and another thing to the rest. We must wait and see and avoid knee jerk reactions, seeking to maximise unity as a national church which believes its part of the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’.

Thirdly let’s look at how Our Lord’s invitation to be one with one another gels with the international level of the universal church. In first century Corinth there were Chloe’s and Apollos’ and Cephas’ groups. In the world of the 21st century there are not three but 45,000 Christian denominations! Reversing this astonishing, alarming disunity seems impossible - but with God nothing is impossible! 

Today’s second reading, looking to the Lord’s return, reminds us that the joy of Easter season is incomplete. ‘Surely, I am coming soon. Amen, come Lord Jesus’ (Revelation 22:20). Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again! As we move next week to Pentecost, the end of Easter season, we also move towards Advent. In the letter to the Ephesians scripture likens Christ our risen and ascended Lord to a heavenly Bridegroom preparing to gather his Bride the Church after her purification from sin, including her divisions, is ended and her holiness is made complete. The world will not be ready for this until the church is ready - that is, made one and holy - which is an astonishing thought! What we are celebrating this morning, our being made one bread, one body, is an anticipation of what is to come, of the Christ who is to come in his fullness. 

The divisions of the world at this moment, linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are linked to Christian divisions, a reminder of how we fail to serve the overarching plan of God to gather a people to himself through his church from every people and nation. Part of the tragedy is the failure of Orthodox Church leaders to present that vision, keep their flock united, condemn the killing of church members by other church members or even call for a ceasefire. The Pope’s intervention has been striking in condemning Patriarch Kirill. This sets back ecumenical relations though it makes clear that the cause of the kingdom of God, of justice, love and peace comes first and church unity rides on the back of that aspiration.

Only as the different churches come together to the foot of Christ’s Cross and admit their need of his forgiveness are they ever going to be made one, as he desires. This happens worldwide whenever Christians opt to maximise holiness and cooperation with their sister churches. As Edward Pusey said ‘it is what is unholy on both sides that keeps us apart’. I am aware that the Jesus Prayer I pray hour by hour - ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ - is a gift from Russian orthodoxy. Though much harm flows from Russia at this time there is also holiness in  many new monastic communities and that holiness is overflowing across the world 

Christian unity grows – locally, nationally or internationally - as Christians grow together in both holiness and love. Let’s make that our priority as much as we can as a new partnership of priests and people emerges here from June 9th. 

‘May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’

Midnight Mass and 8am 25th December 2013

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:5

They say religion is a leap in the dark. I was on the train a week or two back and was disconcerted to hear two business men discussing family members who’d turned religious, lamenting it as something obscure and undesirable. Their whole attitude summarised that of the false enlightenment that surrounds us which sees religion as a leap into the dark.

In recent months the ‘enlightened’ attitudes of British secularism have obscured the age old institution of marriage, eroded the prohibition of suicide and opened the way towards three parent children.  The obscuring of our Christian moral foundation as a society is a direct consequence of pushing faith to the margins of public life.

Over the same period many of us have been digesting a new icon of faith within the world community in Pope Francis.  This man’s welcome engagement with the poorest people in the world and marginalised people in western society, such as refugees and gay people, has led many people not of his communion, including myself, to read his words.

Francis’ first encyclical was published in June and I recently reviewed it for Chichester Magazine and the Church of England magazine New Directions. What brilliance, I thought, as I read it, to counter perceptions of faith as a leap in the dark or obscurantism with a papal encyclical that shines with the light of faith!  

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

What is faith? Francis paints his picture in bright colours and I now quote his words. In the great cathedrals light comes down from heaven by passing through windows depicting the history of salvation. God’s light comes to us through the account of his self-revelation... In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny lies… Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life. 

I was struck by Francis’ image of faith as a realising of God’s self disclosure being like the way daylight lights up our stained glass representation of tonight’s story. If it were day you’d see the nativity scene here because light will have come from beyond this building.

At Midnight Mass we ask the light of the Holy Spirit to shine in our hearts to warm them to that manger scene, and what St Paul describes as the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

To have faith is nothing obscure. It’s to hear God’s call, to see your life as part of his awesome reality and to touch the Lord in the sacraments. It is ‘to grasp reality’s deepest meaning and to see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it towards himself.’

Far from going into some obscure realm Christian faith’s about living our lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity. That commitment to the good of the world is a commitment to partnership with people of good will wherever they are, as the Christmas angel song reminds us – Glory to in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will.

God’s self disclosure – he is love, love of a Father for his Son in the Spirit – God’s self-disclosure given in Bethlehem by the Son taking flesh, announces love as the be all and end all of the universe.

God, who made all that is, loves all that is, just because it is – including you and me! This is heartening good news. It puts heart into those working in the name of that Love, alongside all of good will on this planet, to create wealth and distribute it justly, to feed the hungry, bring peace with justice to the troubled nations and hope for the future.

The light of faith born at Christmas isn’t so much about brightening church interiors like tonight (this morning) as about building hope for the future. Tonight’s feast marks God’s investment in humanity. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Far from a leap in the dark the Christian religion is about coming into the light of Jesus Christ and bringing the world into it. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. For twenty centuries the light of Jesus Christ has warmed and defrosted frozen hearts into extraordinary service. Ann Govas’ splendid book on our church windows recalls such service kindled within these very walls. Take that warm light which shone through St Giles school teacher Sidney Peek who gave his life as a missionary in what is now Malawi, dying at 21 of black water fever and recalled in St Stephen’s window. Or how the same light shone through Katherine Marshall and Lucy Foster who founded a home for sick and incurable children in Kilburn, recalled in the window of St Monica.

(This morning) Tomorrow at dawn God’s natural light (shone) will shine again through these windows - the nativity window and those of Sidney, Katherine and Lucy - to make the images come alive. (Does) Will his supernatural light find a welcome in this congregation here assembled, so we too can be caught up into building God’s future for the world? 

We don’t need to be lifted from obscurity into being the subject of a church window, but if we too are to lighten the world’s obscure darkness we do need knowledge of the Love that first dawned on Christmas day.

God bless you this night, and raise you out of darkness into the light of his self-disclosure which is Love, into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.